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December 5, 2011

the Head and the Heart

The Head & the Heart station on Pandora actually saved me from quitting this day. And yes, I am the kind of person who will admit that music can do that. Totally. I still want to quit, but I'm not gonna now.

I hold my breath. I don't even realize it until I remember to let it out. My shoulders are high, and I forget to loosen up. I am so easy going except I'm not. And this surprises me every time. I think what I want to do is have a little tantrum and an ugly cry. But. That just sounds exhausting, and I don't have time for it anyway.

Ivy keeps carrying around this photo of me in the hospital after I had Grayson. Little Noah and Carter with their matching buzz cuts are on the hospital bed with me and baby Gray. But Ivy cries, face buried in her hands. "I wasn't borned yet. You forgot about meeeeeee!" And no matter how much I try to explain, she doesn't understand. But you were there, you were in my heart. God hadn't made you yet. She loves that photograph but it makes her so sad.

But I missed my brothers! I missed you so much.

And I imagine that she did. All that time waiting. And I think about me and my not-rightness for so long, maybe all my life. I missed her, too, and I didn't even know it. And how many things that I love make me so sad, too. Why they do that? Why? The things I miss that just aren't here yet.

School concert tonight: the high school gym was full of kids and coats and hot. Gray and Ivy would not sit still and there was music, so, Ivy thought it was a personal invitation to perform a ballet and her shoes squeaked on that gym floor with every spin. I took her to the stairwell so that she could dance, I took her on a walk, I sat down again in the bleachers and knew that if we could just get through this, it would be worth it. And it was.

You are so good at this free-writing, Steph. Really you are. Why do they have to do that? Maybe so we appreciate them more? I'm not sure. But they are worth it -- always worth it -- and yes, how very much we will miss it all.

Perhaps Ivy still remembers where she was before she was born and knows she wasn't with all of you yet. Bruce used to say I pushed him out of the way so that I could be born first. You are so good with your kids and Ivy will understand where she was in that picture in time.

And I can totally relate to thinking that you're so easy going only to recognize that you're exactly not. Over the weekend, we were driving around near our mall to have lunch, & I REALLY did not want to go anywhere near the mall because, as I told my husband, "I don't like people." He asked me if I realized that I was one of those people, too.

Oh, that Ivy of yours is just so precious. I love her concern over that photo...and the fact that you can miss something you didn't even know you were missing yet. Isn't it crazy to look back on our lives before kids, before marriage...and wonder how we ever lived life withOUT them?

1. I need that pandora station right now.2. Ivy and Libby would be best friends if we lived near each other and would dance all the time together.3. Libby was just sure today when we bought gifts to donate in Emma's name, that she was not getting any presents at all this year. SO dramatic. Where did this come from?